Disposable e-cigarettes are only as good as the batteries that power them. While they’re great for a little “taster” session of vaping, generally they have a limited battery life that means you can vape for a day or two and then you have to get another one if you want to continue vaping. The advent of pod system improved things notably, with the stronger nicotine e-liquids making it so that the limited battery life takes you much further. But companies are still trying to raise the bar with devices such as the Elf Bar, which pairs a huge pod of high-strength e-liquid with a massive and rechargeable battery and promises a massive 5,000 puffs from the device. But does it do what it sets out to? We’ve taken a look at what they can do for our Elf Bar Disposables review.
Are they worth buying?
The Elf Bar Disposables do an excellent job when it comes to performance and longevity in particular, and boast an eye-catching design that’s comfortable in use. It would be great even as a full-fledged pod system, but as it is, it stands out nicely from other disposables but is ultimately limited by the disposable format more than anything. Definitely worth picking up, but not the best choice for long-term use.
Elf Bar Disposables Review – Design
Appearance
The Elf Bar disposables basically look like miniature box mods. They take the same rectangular shape, with rounded edges to make it more comfortable to hold, with a mouthpiece sticking up from the upper edge. The devices are colored vaguely based on the flavor of the e-liquid they contain, with the Cranberry Grape being a mixture of purple and green, and the Strawberry Kiwi having a pink and green color combination. These basically fade into each other, creating a gentle, pastel-y look that’s quite cool and in line with the “Puff bar” style aesthetic many disposables are going for these days.
USB Charging Port
The most unusual thing – by far – about the Elf Bar disposables is the inclusion of a USB-C charging port. This is on the bottom edge of the device, just beside the airflow intake holes, and it’s recessed so it doesn’t interfere with standing the device up or anything like that. There isn’t really much to add here, it’s just a unique addition that’s worth noting before moving on with the review.
Comfort and Portability
The Elf Bar disposables are very compact, which is a great feature for any device and works well with the higher-strength juices in the pods. The rounded edges make it really comfortable to hold, with the small size meaning that it fits right in your palm too. Everything combined makes it an exceptional device for using out of the house, slipping easily into a pocket or bag and being subtle enough to conceal in your palm if needed. They really knocked it out of the park here.
Elf Bar Disposables Review – The Flavors
I tested out a couple of flavors from the Elf Bar disposables range, and broadly both of them do what you expect and work pretty well overall.
- Cranberry Grape: This definitely hits the nail on the head when it comes to the grape, capturing the flavor and juiciness of the fresh fruit perfectly. The cranberry isn’t particularly easy to pick up, aside from an occasional touch of the flavor rising to prominence. The overall taste is pretty good, regardless, with a gentle sweetness throughout that does just enough to keep you coming back.
- Strawberry Kiwi: This one does an exceptional job when it comes to accuracy. The strawberry is immediately unmistakable, coming through strongly and clearly, with the sweetness you expect from a plump, ripe strawberry. But here the kiwi is just as easy to pick up, blending beautifully with the strawberry and complimenting it while taking nothing away. The combination is hard to beat, and it’s definitely one to try if you pick up the Elf Bar disposables.
Elf Bar Disposables Review – In Use
Performance
The Elf Bar disposables perform just as well as most rechargeable pod systems on the market, and a large proportion of higher-end vape pen style devices too. They put out an impressive amount of vapor for a vape pod in particular, with the device responding quickly to your puffs and producing vapor immediately. With a few short puffs, you get more than enough vapor to keep even longer-term vapers happy, and easily more than you’d get smoke from a cigarette.
Likewise, the flavors from the juices come through clearly and strongly, better than many re-usable pod systems on the market, and with the flavor remaining strong through the pod’s lifespan but dropping a little in intensity towards the end. This isn’t ideal but it’s hard to avoid without some very clever design decisions. It’s really hard to fault the Elf Bar disposables when it comes to performance.
Responsiveness
Since the Elf Bar Disposables work using a puff-to-vape system – so you just inhale when you want to vape in the same way you would from a cigarette – one concern is how well and how quickly it responds to your inhalations. For these, the devices respond basically immediately, starting to produce vapor right away and continuing for as long as you’re inhaling. The system works really well overall, with no glitchy behavior or other issues like auto-firing cropping up through the course of testing. This is a really good point for disposable vapes, because minor problems like this are much more common for puff-to-vape devices.
The Airflow
The airflow through the Elf Bar Disposables is the perfect level for mouth-to-lung vaping, which is the two-stage inhale that cigarette smokers are used to doing. This is also the ideal type of inhale for the higher-strength e-juice that the disposables contain, since a big “direct to lung” style inhale would be quite a lot of nicotine for a single puff and would also likely be quite harsh on the throat.
You can’t adjust the airflow through the Elf Bar Disposable, which is standard for disposable e-cigs, although some – like the ones from VaporLax – have this option by default. There is a ring of thin slots along the bottom of the device which feeds air up to the mouthpiece. Really, it wouldn’t have been too difficult to build this with the capability to adjust the airflow by blocking off some of the slots, but overall the airflow from the device is well-suited to its purpose anyway.
How Long Do the Disposables Last?
All of the larger disposables from Elf Bar (BC3000 and up) have a 650 mAh internal battery, and the BC5000 has a 13 ml tank capacity to support the claimed 5,000 puffs. This is pretty unconventional for a disposable – I mean, all they had to do was make the pod replaceable and you have a legit vape – but it is an effective solution to the classic problem of disposables dying on you before their advertised lifespan is up.
The high nicotine strength means that I only had relatively few puffs per day, but each one lasted me a couple of days before I needed to recharge. You don’t get a USB-C cable with the device, but charging only takes around an hour and you can also vape while it’s charging.
The actual lifespan of the disposable is harder to estimate because it depends so much on how often you vape. The 13 ml of e-liquid is a decent guide, but with a 50 mg/ml nicotine level, many people won’t need as much e-liquid as they usually would. So with this in mind, each disposable lasted me over 10 days, but depending on your dependence level it could be either higher or lower than this. The headline here, though, is that the disposables last way longer than anything else I’ve tried, thanks to the huge pod and the fact they’re rechargeable.
Build Quality
A disposable doesn’t really have to be built as solidly as a re-useable, long-term device, but you want to be able to get a full pod’s worth of use out of it without something going wrong on the way. Thankfully, the Elf Bar Disposables work just as they should, and seem to be put together pretty solidly overall. I had no issues at all through testing, and they feel strong enough that you don’t have to be especially careful with them or anything like that.
Conclusion
The Elf Bar Disposables last longer than pretty much any other disposable vapes on the market. Granted, this is partially because they’re actually rechargeable, but assuming you have a USB-C cable around somewhere, there is no downside to this approach. With the price of $19.99 for a BC5000 Elf Bar Disposable (for $17.99 for the BC3500 version), they’re definitely on the expensive side of the disposable market – and really you could easily find a re-usable device for not much more – but they’re still a solid option if you want a good taste-test of vaping before committing further. The performance and flavor is hard to fault, and although the color scheme might be a little garish, the design overall works really well for the purpose. They aren’t perfect, but they’re definitely some of the best disposable vapes out there today.